Some points seem to be missing every time people want to discuss the Obama vs. The Birthers issue. For example...
As it would turn out, the very definition of "natural-born citizen" has never been "exactly" spelled out in the Constitution. In most cases in the past where someone's citizenship was controversial, including several supreme court cases, the real issue involved was race. At one point, Native Americans (you know, the ones who lived here before Europeans) were not considered natural-born citizens if born on a reservation. The list of cases goes on and on but searching on Wikipedia alone is enlightening.
At this point the law states that an American parent makes for an American citizen. Even if Obama were born in Indonesia or on the moon, he'd still be a natural-born citizen, just like the Panamanian-born John McCain.
The fact that The New York Times and every single other news institution 1) even reports on this issue and 2) somehow fails to mention the facts of the laws of the land every time they report on it simply is about the institutions fueling the fire of a good story and getting more online hits (like mine...). It's actually pretty disgusting that this kind of misinformation can be reported on and on and on to the point of having it come to seem like real information to some people.
How do articles about this debate keep getting published without even mentioning that no matter what, Obama is a citizen? This controversy is not about enshrining candidates' birth certificates (which obviously could be faked anyway), it's about something else.
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